Khushbu was 12 when her family married her off. She could not fully comprehend the occasion when the wedding took place in 2016. The awareness of what it meant to be a child bride—and how it would shape her future—came later, as she grew up.

In the hinterland of Jodhpur, Rajasthan, child marriages remain common. Khushbu’s wedding followed a traditional practice in her community: when a grandparent dies, a communal feast called Mausar is organised, and children in the family are married in the belief that it will bring peace to the departed soul. The practical consideration of saving on costs by holding the wedding alongside the Mausar is also a factor. Khushbu was married at the Mausar of her great-grandmother.

As she got older, Khushbu learnt that her groom had little education, no employment, and some addictions. Under growing pressure from her in-laws to move to her sasural [husband’s family home], she became determined to leave the marriage.

About one-and-a-half years ago, Khushbu approached the local Mahila Thana [women’s police station] in Jodhpur for help. There, she learnt about the campaign to annul child marriages run by Saarthi Trust, an NGO founded and headed by Kriti Bharti. With Bharti’s help, Khushbu filed a petition in the family court in Jodhpur seeking a declaration that her marriage was void because she was a minor at the time.

The groom’s family contested the petition, claiming both parties were adults when the wedding took place. After hearing both sides, Judge Varun Talwar of Family Court Number Two in Jodhpur annulled the marriage on March 19. The court observed that child marriage destroys the present and the future of children, and called upon society to take steps to end the practice.

“I feel liberated. This is like a new birth for me. I want to study further and become independent,” said Khushbu, now 21. She had dropped out of school in Class VII but has since resumed her education and is preparing for the secondary level examination through the open school system.

“I had never accepted the marriage. I found the courage to go ahead with the case because of Kriti didi. It was not an easy fight because the boy’s family insisted on contesting it in court,” she said.

Khushbu succeeded in getting her marriage annulled and has gone back to education. But hers is a rare outcome in the fight against child marriage, especially when it comes to annulment.

A law that stops short

Under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, a child means a male who has not completed 21 years of age and a female who has not completed 18 years. The Act focuses on preventing child marriages by empowering the state administration to stop them.

But child marriage under the Act is not illegal. It is voidable—it can be annulled if either party, who was a child at the time, files a petition in the district court. If the petitioner is still a minor, the plea can be filed through a guardian or the Child Marriage Prohibition Officer. The petition must be filed before the petitioner completes two years of attaining majority. The Act also provides for maintenance to the girl by the groom or his family until her remarriage.

Regardless of the law, child marriages persist across the country. In Rajasthan and neighbouring areas, religious occasions such as Akshaya Tritiya and Peepal Purnima are considered auspicious and are known to see a spurt in child marriages. Mausar, a death feast hosted by a family, is another occasion when children are married in the State.

Social activists say socio-economic factors drive the practice, and that the girl child bears the worst consequences. Poverty is widely recognised as a principal reason behind families marrying off their daughters early.

Tatwashil Kamble, a social activist who has been fighting child marriage for years in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra, said it is a normal occurrence for girls in the region to get married during childhood. “It is nothing out of the ordinary for these girls. Their mothers and grandmothers too were married off at a very young age. It is like an established tradition,” he said.

“It is also largely driven by poverty. Migration is a norm here since many people go to other States to work as sugarcane cutters, at times for six months at a stretch. They feel their daughters will not be safe at home in their absence and hence marry them off,” Kamble said.

The skewed sex ratio in the area is another factor, according to Kamble. “Families are unable to find brides. So underage girls are given in marriage because the groom’s family exerts pressure or says they will not take dowry and will also bear the cost of the wedding,” he said.

Kamble added that the prevalence of child marriages has not reduced even as official figures show a decline. “When we go to a village to stop a child marriage, people often confront us angrily and point out that four, five or even ten such weddings have already taken place, so why are we stopping this particular one,” he said.

Official data, on the other hand, point to a decline since the 2006 Act came into force. The prevalence of child marriage fell from 47 per cent in the National Family Health Survey-III (2005-06) to 23.3 per cent in NFHS-V (2019-21). Cases registered by the National Crime Records Bureau stood at 523 in 2019, 785 in 2020, and 1,050 in 2021. The government has said the increase in NCRB numbers does not necessarily reflect a rise in incidence but may be the result of increased awareness among citizens to report such incidents.

“Ending Child Marriage: A Profile of Progress in India”, a report brought out by the United Nations Children’s Fund in 2023, noted that while India has made progress, it remains home to the largest number of child brides worldwide. One in three of the world’s child brides live in India, and nearly one in four young women in the country were married before their 18th birthday. Over half of the girls and women in India who married in childhood live in five States: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh.

The long road to annulment

The first child marriage annulment in the country is believed to be that of Laxmi Sargara in Jodhpur in 2012. Laxmi was one year old when she was married to a three-year-old boy. A resident of Luni village in Jodhpur district, she learnt of the marriage only in 2012 when her in-laws came to her house and told her she would be going to live with them. She was 18.

Bharti recalls the day Laxmi, a nervous teenager, came to meet her along with her brother and sought help in stopping her Gauna [the formal departure of a bride to her in-laws’ house].

“My immediate thought was that we could stop the Gauna, but her in-laws would return a few months later. There had to be a permanent solution. I consulted lawyers, activists, and researchers. Many advised me that divorce was the only option. I decided we should opt for an annulment, provided for under Section 3 of the 2006 Act. It was a road no one had taken before, but I felt it was tenable,” Bharti said.

Bharti counselled the groom, who, after initial reluctance, agreed to sign an affidavit along with Laxmi before a notary public declaring the marriage void.

“Laxmi’s was the first case of child marriage annulment. Since then, Saarthi Trust has been successful in getting 53 more child marriages annulled. But it has been extremely challenging, primarily because you are up against the society,” Bharti said.

The biggest obstacle, she said, is the caste panchayat, or Jati Panch. “Jati panchayats have excommunicated families that sought annulment. This can have disastrous consequences: your relatives cannot visit you and you cannot even buy groceries from local shops. In earlier days, you were not even allowed to draw water from the communal well,” she said.

Bharti said she has received death and rape threats in the course of her campaign. The hostility, she said, is a reflection of the patriarchy that dictates social practices and the rigidity with which communities want these traditions to be upheld.

“The families of boys spare no expense to challenge annulment in court. They hire good lawyers and make every effort to drag the proceedings for as long as possible,” she said.

A primer on annulment of child marriage brought out by Enfold Proactive Health Trust with the support of the United Nations Population Fund in 2024 noted that awareness efforts on child marriage have been geared towards prevention and prosecution, but not enough attention or resources have gone into informing those who wish to exit a child marriage about the option of nullification.

The document also pointed out that while State government schemes offer financial support and reservation in employment for divorced women, no similar schemes exist for girls and women who choose to have their marriages annulled.

Based on interviews with girls who had annulled their marriages, the primer noted that they faced socio-economic difficulties while filing the petition and called for support structures that include shelter, education, and vocational training, particularly since they face ostracisation from the community and family.

Activists say the two-year window set by the annulment provision is too narrow, given the odds stacked against young people who want to leave child marriages.

“On paper, the child has the right to walk out of the marriage. But the reality is that they hold no agency. It is entirely in the hands of their parents and relatives. They can proceed only if their elders approve,” Kamble said.

He said he has attempted to intervene in a few cases and counselled annulment, but in vain. “I too feel that there must be at least one case, just one, which we can hold up as an example for others,” he said.

Should child marriages be void from the start?

A key question in the debate around the 2006 Act is whether child marriage should be declared void to begin with rather than merely voidable. Critics of the current framework say the law gives precedence to social norms over the child’s interests.

“I believe the law deliberately creates this confusion with regard to the legal sanctity of child marriage. It comes from a realisation that this practice is so deeply ingrained that it cannot be taken head on. The law merely does lip service with regard to the ills of child marriage while maintaining the status quo,” said Vikram Srivastava, advocate and founder of the NGO Independent Thought.

“The first law against child marriage was enacted in 1929. It has been almost a hundred years of legislation against child marriage. And yet, the reality is that child marriage continues to take place,” he said.

Srivastava also pointed to the question of the age of consent, which stands at 18 years, and said it should not be lowered. He drew attention to the Supreme Court’s judgment of October 11, 2017, in Independent Thought v. Union of India, in which the court declared sexual intercourse with a minor wife as rape.

Acting on a petition filed by Independent Thought, the Supreme Court had read down Exception 2 to Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, making sexual intercourse with any girl below 18 years of age—including a wife—an offence of rape.

Srivastava said the judgment is relevant to the question of the validity of child marriage and makes the case for declaring such marriages void ab initio.

The court had observed: “It would be wise for all the State Legislatures to adopt the route taken by Karnataka to void child marriages and thereby ensure that sexual intercourse between a girl child and her husband is a punishable offence under the POCSO Act and the IPC.”

For Bharti, annulment of a child marriage is a “restart” button for the girl. But very few are able to press it. The solution may lie in rethinking the law and placing the interests of the girl child centre stage.

Also Read | ‘Ayali’ focusses on child marriage in Tamil Nadu

Also Read | Our teenagers are not addicted. They are abandoned.